THE WORDS I WISH TO SPEAK ALOUD

erotica

There are lots of ways in which I can relate to the speaker of this poem who thinks that Courbet ‘might capture’ her. I’d like to think he’d paint me as ‘L’origine du Monde’:A scandalous gift for someone important to keep hidden behind a green curtain.

Throw the clay roughly to your potter’s wheel.
Watch it spin between your legs as you stroke it gently,
Play with it,
Make it wet.

Press thumbs into it, fingers,
Quicker, deeper and with more urgency
As sticky clay opens up and rises to meet you
Threatening at any moment to lose form,
Collapse in on itself: An inverted whirlpool
Of a million possibilities

Stay firm, leather hard and resolute to your task.
Run the dripping clay through your hands
So that you feel every curve and swell,
Hollow and lip of your creation
Slide and slip beneath your godly potter’s touch